A cellular communication network allows individual cellular radio frequency (RF) transceivers, or user equipment, to establish a connection to the cellular communication network via one of many cellular communication network base stations. User equipment may periodically generate a received signal strength estimate, for example, a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) or a reference symbol received power (RSRP), for a communication channel signal received from a base station. Such generated received signal strength estimates may be communicated from a user equipment device to a cellular base station for use by the cellular base station in, for example, handing off a connection with the user equipment device to another base station to facilitate mobility and/or as part of transmit power control (TPC) process that reduces interference between transmitting devices by coordinating the transmission power of user equipment devices transmitting within a common transmission area.
Conventionally, a received signal strength estimate is measured by a user equipment device by tuning a receiver within the user equipment device to a channel and ascertaining the signal strength for the tuned channel. Using such techniques, if a received signal strength estimate is needed for multiple channels, a user equipment device sequentially tunes the user equipment device receiver to each respective channel and ascertains the signal strength for each respective channel for which the receiver is tuned. Unfortunately, the process of tuning a user equipment device receiver to a desired channel is a relatively resource and time intensive process compared to the process of measuring a received signal strength of the tuned channel. Therefore, using such conventional techniques, producing received signal strength values, such as an RSSI and an RSRP, for channels within 20 MHz of bandwidth with a channel raster of 200 kHz requires 100× more time than would be required to generate a received signal strength for a single channel. The processing time required to generate received signal strength values for multiple channels may be further increased in emerging communications standards, e.g., 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards, such as Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), in which multiple access is achieved by defining user equipment channels that use non-contiguous frequencies distributed over a relatively wide frequency band.
Hence, anted exists for approaches that reduce the processing time needed fora user equipment device to generate measures of received signal strength for multiple communication channels.